General Education Reform Task Force

At Pitt, we are committed to enriching every undergraduate’s academic experience with transformative opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive without increased financial burden or time to degree. To further this ambitious goal, the Office of the Provost and Academic Leadership Team has convened a task force comprised of faculty, advisors, staff, and students from across all schools and campuses. 

In consultation with internal and national experts, this group will review existing University-wide student learning outcomes and all current general education curricula to recommend a more integrative and unified model for adoption across schools and campuses. This project aspires to develop a curriculum and learning outcomes—as described in the Plan for Pitt—that are unified, measurable, and flexible while encouraging “student skill development in areas such as critical thinking, communication, leadership, data analysis, intercultural and global competency, and collaboration.”

The task force will embrace the opportunity to work collaboratively with faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community partners to explore what it means to educate students as “liberated human beings—people who are independent and flexible in their thinking and capable of responding to the demands of a changing world in ways that are deliberate and civic-minded” (General Education Essentials, Paul Hanstedt).

Key objectives will include, first redefining the 2006 Council of Deans vision of overarching Pitt learning outcomes and then assess the viability of a unified set of general education requirements across all undergraduate schools and campuses. It should be noted that engaging in this endeavor does not preclude individual units from requiring “extended” general education requirements within a specific school to meet the needs of their unit, but instead would assure that the (minimal set of) foundational requirements across all units are consistent and transferable across the University.

Read Motivations and Opportunities for additional information about the task force vision.